Dark Messiah: Might and Magic

aka: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Mofa Men zhi Hei'an Misaiya
Moby ID: 24996
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Description official descriptions

A long time ago an extreme powerful mage called the Seventh Dragon banished all demons from the world and paid with his death for this. But the prophecies tell that after a 1000 years, a Dark Messiah - half human, half demon - will return to the earth to destroy the barrier that stands between the worlds. Now twenty years ago, a Demon Lord successfully mates with Isabel, Queen of the Griffin Empire and all attempts of the Emperor to exorcist her fail (you can play this mission in Heroes of Might and Magic V) and the Dark Messiah is born. Also he doesn't know it yet, his goal is to obtain the Skull of the Seventh Dragon called Skull of Shadows from Skull Island, where it is guarded by the orcs and destroy the barrier between the worlds with it. The name of the Dark Messiah is Sareth and he's an mage apprentice. One day his master sends him to Stonehelm to help another mage retrieve the Skull. And so the Prophecy seems to become real. But it is yours to decide if you use the Skull, once you've obtained it, for good or for evil since you are playing Sareth.

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic is a first-person action game set in the medieval age so instead of guns you use swords, bows and magic to defeat your enemies. As you progress through the story you obtain skill points which you can invest in one of three skill trees called Combat, Magic and Stealth. How you skill Sareth directly influences the combat in the game. You can either play like an assassin and backstab your enemies to oblivion or make him a perfect sword-fighter who can use different combos to take out his enemies for example.

But you can also use your environment to make your kills. There're countless items you can lift up and throw at your enemy or you can light up your arrow on a campfire nearby to inflict more damage. You can also make good use of your foot and kick your enemies off cliffs or kick them into spikes that come out of the wall or use other traps that are scattered in the levels like bringing a statue to a fall.

The main innovation in Dark Messiah is the so-called Body Awareness System. This basically means that Sareth is a real part of the world like every other NPC. This makes not only the whole combat more intense because your whole body moves with every sword-swing you make but the NPCs can interact more directly with you. For example a Orc can take you by your neck and throw you through the room.

If you've already saved (or damned) the world you can turn to the multiplayer-mode. There you've access to five different character classes from the knight to the priestess. With each kill you make you earn experience points and increase in rank. Then you get skill points you can invest in your skill tree to get new talents or upgrade existing ones. This is most important in the Conquest game-mode in which you play various maps in a row and keep your level between all the way. In the Conquest-mode two teams (Humans and Undead) fight over the possession of the flags on a map. Once one team holds all flags, it wins and the next map is loaded. But there's also normal (Team-)Deathmatch available.

Spellings

  • 魔法門黑暗彌賽亞中文版 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 魔法门之黑暗弥赛亚 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 다크 메시아 오브 마이트 앤 매직 - Korean spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

490 People (421 developers, 69 thanks) · View all

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Average score: 76% (based on 50 ratings)

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Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 67 ratings with 5 reviews)

Fantasy, epic, boredom, spectacle, boxes, barrels and tits

The Good
So you are fourteen, you got acne, you are male and you probably live in some Anglo Saxon, European or some ex-soviet country. You have played games since you can remember and 2D is a concept that you don't even understand. Then you browse through your favorite, flash loaded webs about videogames and, suddenly, you find some videos or screenshots of "Dark Messiah" and you think, "wow!, that is a cool game".

It's like an FPS, except that there are orcs and stuff. And look, there is even a dragon, too. My god!, look at those awesome spell animations, and you can impale your opponents! And you can cut ropes that trigger traps, that's amazing. You know what?, there is even magic. Certainly, your teenage tendency to associate action with sex is making your hormones act like kids asking their fathers for some stupid toy they saw on TV before Christmas.

In fact, this game is all about shock value (yes, there is even a lighting spell, too, :)). Finally, whoever holds rights for Might & Magic has realized that the best evolution possible for the franchise is to make an FPS, instead of another game of..., well, thinking. We all know that games are all about action and fans of the series has finally received what they wanted since the first M&M game was released, an FPS, the king of genres.

The Bad
Probably, if you actually are fourteen years old, you wont understand what the problem with this "cool" game is, but this is actually a very good example of the sickness the industry of videogames is experiencing since the late 90's. It's all about shock value and fast transactions of money from your pocket to the content producers' pockets. If you don't believe me, let's see what for are you paying the 40€ this game used to cost.

The game lasts around 12 hours, 8 of which are mostly iterations of the previous ones and as you may have guessed, you can watch most of those 4 hours in the promo videos.

There are, let me count..., no more than 15 different enemies in the whole game, and I'm counting the bosses too (I'm serious, I have counted them). Not only that, but, as they barely mix, you can expend a whole hour killing the same type of enemy all the time. And with the same type, I mean even with the same model and voice. Just because some orcs have bow and others don't, it doesn't make it funnier to kill the same orc 30 times in a row.

The scenarios are also very repetitive. There are like four types of them, and the cliffs from Skull Island (you know, the island where the skull is), which are slightly more interesting than the rest. These are temple, palace/house, city and, of course, the loved-by-all sewers. Necropolis could also be counted, but it's looks a lot like temple, but multiplying the number of tombs by two. When these are not enough, fire and ruins can make some of the previous look slightly different and sum up to the total 10 levels of the game, each of one less original and more tedious than the previous. You know when you start playing a game and it's very fresh and varied at the beginning, but when the part they showed at E3 is finished the game begins getting more and more repetitive? Well, Dark Messiah has it too.

As for now, this game doesn't look very worthy to me. This is just the usual fast-developed product that gives the videogame industry the property of industrial instead of artistic or cultural and makes the general public think on videogames as a form of entertainment instead of culture. You can see this on the average to low quality of all the artistic design on Dark Messiah. You have orcs, goblins, dragons, undeads, necromancers, spells of fire, of ice, of lighting, swords, staffs, bows, etc., and they all look like always. New is a missing concept here.

"What are those statues of big warriors in the temple scenarios for?", you can ask to the lead designer, "nothing, they looked cool and we add them to fill the place" he will answer you. "Ey!, how could I design an orcish sword?" could some object designer ask, "I don't know, look on the internet and copy the coolest looking one" would say the object lead designer. "We are designing a second model for the undeads right now" could the lead designer say, "no, one foe one model, we want to release the game as soon as possible to spare money on the production" would the production director respond. "...and then Leanna defeats the..." tells the story writer while explaining the story to the marketing director, "that's silly, make her just helpless and stupid..., and with big tits" he interrupts and "much better, make another secondary hot female character" he adds.

You can imagine this kind of conversations between unmotivated designers and impatient and money-thirsty producers. Seriously, just hear the dialogues of the porn actress that accompanies the main character, I'm playing the game again just to see if I can have sex with her (which I doubt). And how cleverly does she points you to the solution of every puzzle in the game. Just when you spend more than five seconds looking for the solution to a dead-end she tell something like “well, it looks like you should go to the well hidden panel in front of you, push red-white-red-blue buttons in that order, use the “iron key” in the keyhole at the right of the panel and say the magic orcish words I'm writing you phonetically in a note”. Phew!, you nearly needed to use your brain.

And technically, the game doesn't look that good either. Yes, graphics are more or less modern, but the whole design lacks motivation and it affects negatively the player very fast (as anything else in the game). As I said, models and textures are reused a million times in each level. Orcs looks like typical orcs, swords like typical swords, black knights like typical black knights and so on, and the animations are rather broken. Even the spells, that looks spectacular most of the time, have very unrealistic sounds (yes, spells are not real by themselves, but still...).

But the worst graphics feature in this game have to be the lighting. The lighting is not bad by itself, but level design makes it really painful for your eyes. Every time you are indoors lighting will be composed of low intensity but bright light sources scattered through the level. That means a continuous change in the light intensity of your screen which can make your eyes hurt in less than half an hour of playing session. The solution to this? The dark vision spell, that let's you see the world in a scale of purples that also gives you headache. And not happy with this, the spell designers decided to make your most powerful attack spell some kind of flamethrower that fills all the screen with yellow fire to make your already hurting eyes cry. If I say this game is painfully to play, I'm talking literally.

The only thing that can save this game is the combat system, based on using extensively the many traps the levels consist on and the many weapons and spells you can access to in the game. Still, this gets repetitive very fast, specially in the last levels, when you can kill hordes of enemies without even looking put interest in what you do. By the second or third level you start considering how lucrative it has to be to have a shop of spike traps.

Other not-too-bad feature is the simplified RPG system. Every time you finish a level or complete a task, you gain some skill points that can be spent increasing your abilities. Basically, you can be a thief, a mage or a warrior (now that's variety) or a mix of them. As any role player knows, mix are only good if the system is balanced and this is quite truth for Dark Messiah. The problem is that this game is very repetitive and changing your strategies all the time to make an effective use of all the skills of your warrior-mage, mage-thief or thief-warrior will only make it last longer. I played the game as a total warrior and a total mage, and by the half of the game it was so boring that I only wanted to finish it fast. If you choose a mixed role for your character the game will only take longer and more tedious, and I don't even want to imagine how is it to play it with a thief.

Other RPG element simplified for Dark Messiah is the inventory. I think there's nothing on this game that you can be called a "puzzle" so the inventory only stores thing that wont interact between them nor with thing the world outside the inventory. And it's so huge that, unless you want to collect it all, you wont have to choose carefully what to store and what not.

The Bottom Line
Ok, Dark Messiah is a spectacular game, with a lot of action, some interesting use of RPG and... more spectacle, but it is an ostensibly low quality product. You can feel it, is everywhere. All elements are repeated a gazillion times, everything looks like done before, the story is boring, the characters void, you know that even the producers and designers of the game don't give a crap about it. It's very hard to enjoy and take seriously a game under these circumstances. Don't get tricked by the trailers and cool screenshots, it doesn't worth it.

And who the hell is that guy in the main menu?

Windows · by MichaelPalin (1414) · 2007

A Legend in the Fantasy FPS

The Good
To be honest, I always took a much greater interest in the multiplayer portion of Dark Messiah rather than its single player brethren. Developed by Kuju Entertainment, the company responsible for helping develop the EyeToy games for the PS2, the multiplayer mode for Call of Duty: Finest Hour, and Battalion Wars for the Nintendo Gamecube, the multiplayer mode of Dark Messiah encompasses a unique style of gameplay in a fantasy setting. The game splits between 2 factions, the Humans and the Undead. Each faction allows 5 playable classes, the Assassin, the Priestess, the Mage, the Archer, and the Warrior. The only difference between the Humans and the Undead is their physical appearance; otherwise, they are essentially the same.

The Bad
Despite some slight conflicts of class balance, the multiplayer portion of the game leads as an excellent and worthy contender of popular multiplayer first person shooters. To begin with, the Assassin is a very fast paced and fun-to-play class. In fact, all classes are extremely fun to play, and it will only get better as Kuju decides what should be done to help make the game even better. (And they do, their commitment to the Open Beta was extraordinary, as far as updates and forum responses go). The Warrior is a tanker lover’s dream, being able to negate any spells and absorbing the most damage with its Reinforced Armor. Surprisingly, the Warrior’s attacks are powerful as well. The Priestess is most likely the main concern of many balance critics. With her instant self-heal ability and an armor buff that lowers any kind of damage, the Priestess can take on any class and win. I haven’t even mentioned the insane range of her Corrupt ability and the Bramble spell that slows ALL players to a crawl. Kuju Entertainment obviously decided that Priestesses should do more than just supporting other classes. The Mage is insanely powerful as well, but only in late levels. Finally, the Archer is a class that rewards those with practice; arrows not only take time to reach the target, but they also arc as well. However, 1 fully charged shot deals 56 damage; 2 shots will kill the player.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, the multiplayer portion of Dark Messiah is anything but the norm. It features a retrospective view of the modern first person shooter with 5 totally different playable classes. The game delivers tons of different tactical strategies, and will only get better as Kuju Entertainment continues to please its fans with updates and additions to the game.

Windows · by gi han (2) · 2006

Underdevlopment strikes again

The Good
Fantasy themed FPS's are rare, much too rare for my taste. Heretic, Hexen, and Hexen II ("The Serpent Riders Trilogy" as I refer to them) were fantastic, clever, creative games that were a nice break from the more common FPS themes. At least, they were for their time. Yet still, to this day, the overwhelming majority of this genre consists of military, stealth, sci-fi, and horror. For some reason, fantasy remains an elusive theme.

Enter Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, the first fantasy-themed game I've seen in quite some time, about the adventures of one mage apprentice named Sareth (I'll leave it at that). The first thing you'll notice is the beauty of the game. The Source engine, while not the most technically advanced, especially now that it's nearly four years old, spins us a web of a haunting, sinister atmosphere that could compete with the Thief series. Outdoor areas are appropriately bright and beautiful, while darker environs such as crypts and abandoned temples are genuinely frightening and can cause a sense of paranoia.

The weapons and other inventory items are pretty standard fare for a fantasy game: daggers, swords, shields, magical staffs, bows, as well as the expected array of defensive/offensive spells and armor. The game is designed with the idea that the player can choose which type of Sareth character to play during the course of the game, be it magic, combat, or stealth based...essentially an RPG-lite design without rolling the dice.

Like Half-Life 2, the player can also put their surroundings to use during combat with enemies. Speaking of enemies, if you've ever played a typical fantasy game, then you'll know what to expect; spiders, undead, orcs, and evil wizards. The most fun part of the game is, obviously, the combat. I must say it was highly, highly entertaining sneaking up behind a necromancer and slitting his throat, kicking goblins off cliffs, impaling evil knights onto spikes, setting zombies on fire, and electrocuting spiders. I also can't tell you the pleasure of cutting the rope on a chandelier only to have it the crush five knights who were previously charging at me swords waving.

Unfortunately, well...

The Bad
...the combat is about the entirety of the game's value. And as fun as it may have been, it wasn't enough after a while. In fact, the combat environments seemed as though they were laid out on a snap-to grid! No matter what locale your traversing, be it a crypt, a castle, a temple, or a courtyard, there were always carefully placed spikes, fire beds, stacks of barrels on destructible racks, and a/an [insert pendulous heavy thing here] suspended on the ceiling only held there by a weak rope, and your friendly neighborhood bottomless chasm. Seeing as how the Source engine is so well known for its physics capability and its ability to render many movable objects at once, it surprises me that the developers didn't invent more creative ways to utilize the environment. The above options are about all you have.

Speaking of combat, the game does indeed heavily favor the Fighter over the Mage or Assassin. While there are a wealth of spells and some decent magical weapons (staffs of course), most of the enemies in the game don't appear to be designed to be damaged much by them. While shooting fireballs at a knight will eventually kill him, it's simply no comparison to slicing and dicing away with a pair of high-damage daggers or a sword. Still, the stealth player is yet again the most neglected. Sure, there are missions/areas with plenty of shadows and opponents ripe for some stealth play, but most of the game just doesn't call for that because it isn't designed for it. The game is simply too linear for its own good. Yes, I do realize that despite the absence of guns this is an FPS, and most FPS's are linear, but the level design still could have been more open-ended and not so water-tight.

As for the game's plot, well... The FPS genre is generally not known for great storytelling;.that isn't to say an FPS cannot have a solid plot (see Half-Life or Thief), but they are far and few between. Dark Messiah is not one of those few I'm sorry to say. The plot is harmless, generic fantasy: find the Magical Object and destroy the Evil Power because it is Your Destiny. But seeing as how the gameplay hours for this title are quite short (8 to 10 hours is a rough estimate), there just is not enough time for Arkane Studios to give us their own personal Silmarillion.

All in all, the game feels extremely underdeveloped. There were so many elements of this game that could have made it a great title, but sadly fate did not smile upon this game. I'm unsure as to whether or not Arkane was being hen-pecked by Ubisoft to get this game out, but it certainly seems that way.

The Bottom Line
To put it succinctly, if you want a gigantic fantasy world ripe for exploration, more weapons, spells, enemies, styles of play than you can count, and an epic fantasy plot, then I would direct you to the nearest Elder Scrolls title. But if you're looking for mindless fun... In spite of all the flaws I rambled about, the atmosphere is fairly engaging, the combat is entertaining, and Dark Messiah is a perfect game for playing in 30 minute or one hour bursts. Now that it can be had for less than $20, pick yourself up a copy and kick some goblins off cliffs!

Windows · by HandofShadow (49) · 2008

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development

This is the second Might & Magic since Ubisoft acquired the license to the universe. The singleplayer part of Dark Messiah was developed by Arkane Studios. Kuju Entertainment Ltd. was responsible for the multiplayer mode.

German version

In the German retail version some blood effects were removed: when executing an enemy which lies on the ground, in cutscenes and during a special move against the enemy's stomach in adrenaline mode. Also removed were cut off limbs, enemies die instantly instead of slowly burning to death when using fire, and interactions with corpses (using weapons, burning, throwing). A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German). The German version on Steam is uncut.

Setting

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic takes place in Ashan, the Might & Magic world created by Ubisoft. It replaced the old Might & Magic universe, which consisted of many different worlds and was used by New World Computing until its dissolution. According to Ubisoft, it was done because the old continuity became hard to manage, and to avoid confusing newcomers.

In contrast with the old universe, which incorporated science fiction elements, Ashan is a pure fantasy world. The first game it was featured in was Heroes of Might and Magic V.

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • February 01, 2007 - Best PC Action Game in 2006
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 02/2007 – #2 Best Action Game in 2006
    • Issue 03/2007 – Best Action Game in 2006 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Mark Ennis.

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Game added by Sicarius.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Sciere, vedder, Paulus18950, lee jun ho, Patrick Bregger, Stuttgart.

Game added November 18, 2006. Last modified March 23, 2024.